Half-Life co-creator and franchise writer, Marc Laidlaw, confirms in an email to a fan that he has retired from Valve and has no knowledge of what is planned for Half-Life 3.

Marc Laidlaw, co-creator and writer on the Half-Life franchise, has quietly retired from his position at Valve. Surprisingly, the news broke thanks to a fan who sent an email to Laidlaw to express frustration over the lack of information from Valve regarding Half-Life 3. In a candid response to the fan, Laidlaw confirmed that he no longer works at Valve and is no longer a spokesperson for the company or the Half-Life franchise.

While Laidlaw didn't confirm any specific reasons for his sudden departure after 18 years at Valve, he did mention that personal reasons and the chaos of game production led him to this decision. Laidlaw also spoke of his desire to work on more self-directed writing projects, citing his age as a big factor in making the career switch.

"I am no longer a full or part time Valve employee, no longer involved in day to day decisions or operations, no longer a spokesman for the company, no longer privy to most types of confidential information, no longer working on Valve games in any capacity."

Sadly, no new information was unearthed about Half-Life 3 as the franchise's former writer confirmed in the email that he had no idea where the future of the franchise currently sits. Considering that the writing process for modern games tends to be a collaborative process, the chance that his departure negatively impacts the development of a potential Half-Life 3 probably won't be as big as it would have been 10+ years ago.

Interestingly enough, Half-Life 3 has been in in the news quite a bit in the past few months. While the Half-Life fanbase continues to wait for any morsel of information from Valve, a number of intrepid gamers uncovered a hidden file called hl3.txt containing what appears to be a number of potential gameplay features including a zipline, procedural spawning, VR movement, and NPC speech. Whether this is Valve continuing to tease fans or if this a not-so subtle hint that an actual game is being worked on is any ones guess.

Further adding fuel to the Half-Life 3 fire was a noir-style mystery hidden within the most recent Steam Winter Sale. Users stumbled across a series of hidden puzzles from the main Steam website, finding a number of red herrings, but also some interesting clues which appear to be more than coincidence. A Reddit group calling themselves the Steam Sales Detectives, have taken it upon themselves to fully decode and solve the many clues and puzzles hidden by Valve.

Do you think this news will impact Half-Life 3 if it is indeed currently in development? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below.

Source: Reddit